Really nice project! I've been hunting this on eBay for couple years not. I actually found one German sell. sadly I can't handle the shipping fees. Anyway,  AFAIK this display is capable of custom bitmap too. Would be nice to make some kind of Server / NAS status or network monitor display. Put some nice graphic icon for decoration ;D

Yep you can define custom characters, I've added that functionality to the 2nd revision of this project for my 16x4 display that is completely controlled with one spi interface.

I own the SCDQ5542 and SCDQ5544 each. These Shift register based display can turns dot on and off independently, You can chain many of them and make the Graphic Dot display, but of course if you were the lucky one to find more than 2 (btw I bought it from China for 10 bucks each).

How's progress?  I have some of these displays and I'd rather not reinvent the wheel to get them working.  I had a hack up on SPI at one point but the code was lost with one of my older PC's.  I was considering something I2C to get it running this time around.

See the 16x4 version I made recently, I've added example code that controls the display via spi. It wouldn't be very difficult to port to i2c but would require modification to the pcb and adding a small onboard microcontroller.

Nice to see more display fan(atic)s here. 👍

I love vintage/rare/unique display technologies, just a shame that they are so expensive. I got lucky this time in finding a seller who listed lots of these displays for $40/ten pieces (instead of the usual $30 a piece), not exactly cheap but probably the cheapest I will ever find them until they become impossible to find. I could do so many interesting, complex projects if displays like these didn't tend to cost an arm and a leg.

It took me 30 years to get this display working again:

https://hackaday.io/project/160958-restoring-a-beckman-neon-display-clock

Well I had other things to do in the meantime. 😁

You're in the right place to share this attraction :D

I have a little work to do on the driver software to make it serially controllable and then I have to figure out what I want to display other than the obligatory clock I always end up making. Maybe I'll make it into some sort of wifi connected news ticker, or internet radio/plex interface display.